Livestock can make all the difference in the fight against climate change, according to Allan Savory.

Ashley Robinson, Regina Leader-Post

Published on: June 11, 2017 | Last Updated: June 11, 2017 3:08 PM CST

Allan Savoury, president of the Savory Institute based in Zimbabwe. Savory will be giving a presentation over video at the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association's Annual General Meeting in Moose Jaw on June 12, about holistic management in regards to livestock grazing. PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE SAVORY INSTITUTE-

Livestock can make all the difference in the fight against climate change, according to Allan Savory.

“The whole world is looking to technology to do it. It’s absolutely insane how detached from reality scientists and institutions are unfortunately. Now that can only be addressed as we’ve shown time and time again for years by properly managing livestock,” he said.

Savory is giving a remote video presentation Monday at the Saskatchewan Stock Grower Association Annual General Meeting in Moose Jaw. The meeting started on Sunday night and runs until Tuesday.

Savory is the president of the Savory Institute in Zimbabwe. For decades now he has taught his holistic land management strategies around the world.

“I first realized that we had no option but to use livestock way back in the 1960s. The dilemma I faced and we all faced at that point was how to do it,” he said.

For centuries practices used by humans had wrecked the Earth and Savory realized the way to help was to use carbon sequestration through livestock grazing management.

Carbon sequestration is when carbon dioxide is stored in the ground and removed from the atmosphere, where it would trap heat and lead to global warming. Native grasslands can store a lot carbon dioxide in plant roots.

“It’ll mean changing the cattle production because there’s no question they should not be in feedlots. And the public and celebrities and people that are against that are absolutely right. Feedlots should be completely illegal,” he said.

Savory’s solution was holistic planned grazing — a detailed livestock grazing plan that gets livestock out of non-grazing feedlots and back eating grass. He modelled it after century-old military planning procedures.

“I literally just copied military planning for immediate battlefield conditions, the technique and the way they did that. All I had to do was find a way of prolonging it because they always plan for a day, or half a day, or an hour, or two,” he said.

In Savory’s approach livestock managers create a grazing plan which divides up the grazing area. Livestock then graze in a herd on certain areas for a short amounts of time, so as to not overgraze. The grazing must be monitored and the plan changed or adjusted as needed.

“It works in any environment, any place in the world. We’ve not been able to make it fail even where we’ve tried to push it to extremes, the planning process just works and it consistently works (for carbon sequestration),” Savory said.

Since first developing holistic planned grazing in the 1960s Savory has taught it around the world through the Savory Institute. The institute was founded by Savory and his coworkers who were all determined to spread the holistic teachings.

Since then the Savory Institute has encouraged people around the world to form locally led, locally managed holistic management hubs. These hubs provide training on holistic planned grazing with the institute’s support and guidance.

Savory hopes he can encourage Saskatchewan livestock producers to follow his approach.

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